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The Founding of Damascus University 1903-1936: an Essay in Praise of the Pioneers

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The Founding of Damascus University 1903-1936: an Essay in Praise of the Pioneers ISSN 0806-198X The Founding of Damascus University 1903-1936: An essay in praise of the pioneers SAMI MOUBAYED* Abstract Damascus University, a pioneer in Levantine academia, has generally been ignored by Syriatologists and historians. Its story speaks volumes about the founding fathers of the Syrian Republic, however, and the anti-colonial movement under French Mandate rule. This article looks its the founding years under Ottoman times and ends with the tenure of its founder and first president Riḍà Saʿīd. Given that collapse of higher education in Syria at present, because of the current war, it is imperative to look back and see how Syrian academics emerged from times of war to revamp their university after the turmoil of World War I and French occupation. Present academics might find inspiration and a roadmap for the future in looking at the university’s past and the deeds of its founders. Keywords: Damascus, Syria, Damascus University, French Mandate, Education in the Arab World Introduction In late December 2011, crime struck at Damascus University. A young man discretely slipped through the campus garden into one of the numerous stone-built arched halls. The high ceilings spoke of age and splendour. The young boy was a sophomore student at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. He walked into the main auditorium to chat with friends before an exam, slowly taking out a well-concealed gun. At close range he shot two of his friends. They had quarrelled over politics a night earlier. Since that day, hundreds of university students have died in the spiraling war that has gripped all Syrians by the throat. Some were shot on the battlefield, where they gave up their books and grabbed their guns, fighting on both sides of the armed conflict. As the war drags on, more are bound to die. The story of the young assassin has been completely dwarfed by the cycle of violence that has engulfed Syrians since March 2011. In terms of infrastructure, curriculum, and human resources, university education has been levied to the ground by the tidal wave that has swept through Syria. Young people, after all, are the springboard for change in any society and usually pay a very high price in times of war and social unrest. It wasn’t always like this, however. Once, within living memory, Damascus University—known as The Syrian University until 1958—was claimed jewel of the crown of the Middle East. It was Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies • 18 (2018): 179-200 © Sami Moubayed, The Damascus History Foundation in Damascus, Syria Sami Moubayed an avant guard institution with an alumni history that summed up the ‘who’s who’ of the entire Arab World. Very intentionally, it inspired A-class scholarship, firebrand nation- alism, and good citizenship. Quiet unintentionally, it also inspired revolution. In June 1953, one student from the central city of Homs famously refused to accept his university degree from Syrian President Adīb al-Shīshaklī. The Syrian leader was presiding over a military regime and the young student from the large Sibāʿī family did not like it. As he rose to the podium, he looked al-Shīshaklī straight in the eye—who was seated in the front row wearing his military fatigues—and said: ‘I refuse to obtain a degree in law from a president who doesn’t respect the law!1’ That single statement set Damascus University ablaze, forcing the army to intervene, conducting a manhunt of faculties, classrooms, and dormitories. Students were arrested and thrown into the infamous Mezzeh Prison on the outskirts of the Syrian capital. Months later, they managed to bring down Adīb al-Shīshaklī. Apart from one book in Arabic, Tārīkh al-Jāmiʿah al-Sūriyyah, written by Damascus Page | 180 University Professor ʿAbd al-Karīm Rāfiq, there is not a single source of literature covering the early years of higher education in Syria. Only one book complements Rāfiq’s book, being the forgotten memoirs of Damascus University President ʿAbd al-Qādir al-ʿAẓm. The book, found at The Damascus History Foundation in Syria, is out-of-print and unavailable, either in stock, second-hand, or at libraries either in Syria or Europe. It was presumably published in very small quantity back in 1960, and no second edition was made. The literature stops there. There is nothing of the like either in English or French. Most of the seminal books on French Mandate Syria prefer to discuss other topics like minorities and Syrian politics vis-à-vis the Great Powers during the inter-war period. Most of the primary sources for this essay were gathered from early articles in Arabic penned at the university’s medical journal back in the early 1940s, or through newspapers, memoirs, and interviews with former students and faculty. The university library itself, still operational despite the war as of 2018, is filled with original stacked documents, correspondences, and photo- graphs from the early years of university life, albeit un-organized and often in poor condition. Nobody has done the task of filing or screening the stacks of papers, and sadly many of them have been destroyed at their storehouses in the Damascus suburbs, due to intense fighting, since 2011. The university itself, however, remains standing, despite the current war, and is now approaching its 115th anniversary. Due to the scarcity of resources, the task of writing the university’s history remains incomplete. Lacking a methodological and theoretical framework, this cannot be labelled an academic study but rather, a collection of data that might inspire future research, if new archival material is unearthed and contextualized. Once and if that happens, the story of Damascus University can properly fit into the political and social history of the broader Middle East, in addition, of course, to that of higher education in the Arab World. 1 Author interview with Damascus University Professor Munīr al-ʿAjlānī, Beirut, 3 September 2000. See also, ʿAfīf BAHNASĪ, Mudhakkarāt ʿAfīf Bahnasī, Damascus: Wathīqat Waṭan Foundation, 2018: 45. • 18 (2018): 179-200 The Founding of Damascus University 1903-1936 An ambitious Sultan A buzz swept through intellectual circles in mid-1900 saying that the Ottoman Sultan ʿAbdülhamīd II was planning to open a top-notch medical school in the old Umayyad capital, Damascus. It was to be funded by the Ottoman Ministry of Education.2 ʿAbdül- hamīd was a shrewd man and enlightened monarch with a particularly soft spot for Damascus, a city that had been ruled by his ancestors for 400 years, but which he never visited in person. The Ottomans affectionately called it Şām-ı şerīf which roughly translates into ‘Damascus the Noble.’ Because of its importance as the point of departure for one of the two great Hajj caravans to Mecca, Damascus was treated with more attention by the Porte than its size might have warranted—for most of this period, Aleppo was more populous and commercially more important. Damascus, however, was the most culturally advanced and historically important Arab city in the Empire, thus explaining ʿAbdülhamīd’s attention. Page | 181 Damascus in the early years of the 20th century was run by cosmopolitan merchants well versed in overseas trade, and deeply committed to a spiritual form of Sufi Islam. The city’s notability was pro-Ottoman. Its artisans were ingenious, renowned for their craftsmanship worldwide. The city’s spiritual forces were intact and its ulema were among the most highly respected men of science and literature throughout the Muslim World. Back in 661, Damascus had been home to the glorious Umayyad Caliphate of the Muslim Empire, which created a modern navy, a police force, along with its own currency, and exported the Muslim faith to Europe. The Umayyads built the Umayyad Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in the world, during the era of the great caliph, al-Walīd I. The mosque was universally accepted as the fourth holiest site in Islam. Additionally, many of the Prophet Muḥammad’s wives and companions were buried at the ancient Bāb al-Ṣaghīr cemetery in Damascus, southwest of the mosque. ʿAbdülhamīd was keen on giving meticulous attention to Damascus, seeing that its aqueducts were maintained, its schools were upgraded, and its hospitals constantly furnished with modern equipment and the Empire’s finest physicians. This was a religious duty for the Ottoman Sultan. His theological mentor, Sheikh Maḥmūd Abū ’l-Shāmāt, was a Damascene notable who constantly lobbied on behalf of the city at the Imperial Palace in Istanbul.3 Three of the sultan’s top advisers, Muḥammad Fawzī Pasha al-ʿAẓm, Aḥmad ʿIzzat Pasha al-ʿAbd, and ʿAṭā Pasha al-Bakrī, were also from the Damascus aristocracy. All of them had the Sultan’s ear and must have surely nodded approvingly when he approached them in early 1900, saying that he wished to see a modern school of medicine up and running within the high walls of Damascus. The reasons behind ʿAbdülhamīd’s initiative were numerous. The Ottoman Governor of Damascus, Nāẓım Pasha, had written to the Sultan in 1899, complaining that Damascene midwives were ignorant, thus explaining the high mortality rate among newborns.4 He suggested creating a school to train them in modern birth-giving techniques. Prominent 2 Al-Aḥwāl, 12 February 1900. 3 ʿAbd al-Karīm RĀFIQ, Tārīkh al-Jāmiʿah al-Sūriyyah: al-Bidāyah wa’l-numuww, 1901-1946. Nobel Books, Damascus, 2004: 10. 4 RĀFIQ 2004: 9. • 18 (2018): 179-200 Sami Moubayed Sunni Muslim families from Damascus had also petitioned the Porte asking for such an institution. There were only three similar schools in the Empire. One was the state-run Ottoman Medical Institute in Istanbul. Second was the Faculty of Medicine at the French- run Jesuit University in Beirut.
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